Prostitution is technically not illegal in Canada. The practice is restricted, however, by legislation that prohibits “the communication or intent to communicate with any person for the purpose of engaging in prostitution or of obtaining the services of a prostitute.” You are ostensibly free to buy or sell sex. But a prostitute is not allowed to advertise his or her wares; likewise, a potential client cannot advertise his desire to buy sex.
The laws against “communicating,” in effect, create problems within an otherwise legal practice. The effect is to keep prostitution underground, perpetuating the social stigma of sex work as a criminal activity and reinforcing latent (and not-so-latent) views that sex work is dehumanizing and therefore inherently fraught with “risks.”
It is true that sex work is dangerous. Sex workers are notoriously at risk for violent crimes such as assault, rape, and robbery. But it is likely that these brutal aspects of sex work are caused not by the act of selling sex itself, but by views of it that are imposed from outside. The criminalizing of sex work by making illegal “communication” and other adjunct practices creates the attitude that prostitutes are somehow deserving of violence because they are doing illegal work.
Sex workers, particularly those who work the streets, often encounter hostility and violence. A study focusing on sex workers in Vancouver found that the most serious risk that sex workers face is “bad tricks” [violent clients]. One woman reported that in eight years of sex work she had received a broken nose and broken ribs, had her hands scalded on a hot plate, had beer bottles thrown at her or broken over her body, had been stabbed, had her body doused in gasoline and set on fire, had been thrown from a third-story window, and had been robbed or beaten numerous times, all at the hands of tricks.
How is it that this woman’s clients could feel justified in perpetrating such physical violence against her? The answer is obvious: she is a prostitute.
Where the body is commodified and sold for sex, it is easy to believe that a sex worker is a thing to be used or abused. Yet the problem here is not that sex work in itself invites violence, but rather that prevailing social attitudes permit the victimization of sex workers, and furthermore make it difficult for sex workers who have been victims of violent crimes to get help-from the police or anyone.
Colloquially we refer to sex workers “selling their bodies,” but in fact what a sex worker is doing is providing a service, much like a tradesperson. You might believe that you have some social superiority over your plumber, but you would probably not assault or rob him. Despite the disturbing fact that you might feel you’re “better” than him, you still consider his body to be his own.
While ostensibly the sex worker has the same rights to physical safety and security as you, me, and plumbers everywhere, those rights are somehow abdicated in the process of selling blowjobs and intercourse. Despite the fact that sex workers are persons, the idea of the sex worker’s body as an object-and, more importantly, the common moral judgments and criminal associations of providing your body as this particular kind of object-seems to allow a client to rationalize deviant behaviour.
But it is not the rendering of the sex worker’s body into an object that creates the problem-people objectify their bodies every day in multifarious non-sexual ways. A construction worker, for example, hires out his body as an instrument to carry out a function. His or her body is reduced to a tool for getting something done.
Rather, the perceived criminal deviance of providing your body as sexual object in exchange for money is what, in the eyes of many, permits other kinds of criminal deviance.
My grandfather had a favourite proverb that illustrates this concept: “Stealing from the thief makes God laugh.” There is a belief that by engaging in criminal behaviour, the criminal somehow relinquishes his or her rights; in the case of sex workers, this extends implicit permission to their tricks to engage in unlawful behaviour. There are few consequences for violent tricks so long as people continue to believe that sex work is criminal, and hence that sex workers are in some way deserving of assault, rape, or robbery.
Despite our increasingly liberal attitudes, we continue to attach a criminal stigma to sex work. Advocacy groups like the Sex Professionals of Canada have been working hard to change this. They are pushing the government to accept the fact that sex workers provide a service equivalent in social status to other professions, and their goal is to have the legislation that criminalizes sex work repealed.
Distancing sex work from the criminal sphere is an important step in legitimizing the profession. This legitimacy will be crucial in changing the prevailing social attitudes that cause sex workers to be the victims of violent assault, and ultimately in returning ownership of sex workers’ bodies to themselves.
